Serial Port Cards

The Problem with some PCI Serial Cards. BAD PROCESSOR CHIPS?! Does some serial port cards really have bad processor chips? ABSOLUTELY! Unless you invest in a PCI serial card with a quality processor and chipset you will very likely, at some point,...

Many newer motherboards now have PCIe slots instead of the older standard PCI slots, so if you need to add serial RS232 COM ports to your desktop computer then this PCIe serial card is the best way to do it. Using a PCIe serial card is often more...

This item has been discontinued. If you have already tried using a low-cost PCMCIA serial card you most likely have already experienced either a computer freeze, driver errors, being unable to communicate with your serial device or even a BSoD....

Generally about the Serial Port Card.

A serial port card such as a PCI or PCMCIA serial card are easy and reliable ways of establishing a serial RS232, RS485 or RS422 port in a computer. Usually a serial card is used for adding a serial RS232 port in a computer which can be used for connecting a variety of serial RS232 devices, however serial port cards can also be used for creating multiple RS485 or RS422 ports.

Typically a RS232 serial card is either categorized as a PCIexpress card (PCIe), a standard PCI card, a PCMCIA serial card or the new standard replacing the PCMCIA serial card called a serial ExpressCard which is smaller than the PCMCIA serial port card and is being used in most new laptops sold today.

The most commonly used serial port card is the PCMCIA card or PCI serial card, probably because these are easy to insert and start using in any desktop or laptop computer with a standard PCMCIA port slot or standard PCI card slot. However the new ExpressCard serial port card mentioned earlier is taking over, and also the PCI Express card is taking over the standard PCI card. .

After the PCMCIA serial port card, the PCI serial port card is the next most
popular type of serial card. The PCI RS232 card is a bit harder to install than the a standard PCMCIA card, since this type of serial port card requires you to physically open up your desktop computer and install the card in the slot inside your computer. The PCI serial card can only be installed in desktop computers. The PCMCIA RS232port card can be installed in laptops but also in desktops with a PCMCIA slot.

Drivers for serial port cards.

Since a PCI serial card is installed directly into the PCI slot in your computer it does not require any drivers to work. This is often a big advantage, not only because it avoids problems with installing and working with the drivers but more often because latency sensitive serial devices will not work properly with serial ports dependable on drivers. The drivers for a virtual serial port will always create a slight data delay in the communication which latency sensitive devices might not accept.

The PCMCIA RS232 port card and the ExpressCard RS232 card both requires drivers to work. After installing the drivers a virtual COM port will show up in your computers Device Manager. If you are using a quality serial port card this usually works fine, however many low-cost serial cards often has driver problems making communication hard or even impossible.